Thomas Stocker elected Co-chairman of the IPCC’s ‘Science’ Working Group
Bern, 04.09.2008 - Professor Thomas Stocker, a leading climate scientist at the University of Bern, will co-chair the IPCC Working Group which studies the physical scientific aspects of climate change. He was elected along with Professor Qin dahe from China at the 29th Plenary Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) being held in Geneva from 31 August to 4 September 2008. Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger stated that Switzerland was extremely honoured that one of its citizens should be accorded such a position.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading scientific body for the evaluation of climate change at global level. It publishes evaluation reports every five or six years on all aspects of climate change (science, effects on ecosystems, emission reduction measures and technologies). Its fourth assessment report, published in 2007, had a major impact on the work of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and more particularly on that of the Conference of the Parties in Bali last December. During that conference, governments adopted a road map for negotiations on an international climate regime post-2012. In December 2007, the IPCC was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with former US Vice-President, Al Gore.
Mr Thomas Stocker and Mr Qin dahe will co-chair the work of Working Group 1 in preparing the Fifth Assessment Report expected in 2013. As in the past, two other working groups are charged with studying the consequences of climate change and its socio-economic dimensions respectively. Each Working Group is co-chaired, with one chair drawn from an industrialised country and the other from a developing country.
An honour for Switzerland
Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger, the head of the DETEC, who championed the candidature of Professor Stocker, reacted to this nomination by stating that the co-chairmanship was an honour for Switzerland and served as recognition of the work on climate change conducted in our country and of the key role played by Switzerland in climate matters. Switzerland is also privileged to support the IPCC by hosting its secretariat at the headquarters of the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva. The annual costs of 1.8 million francs will be covered by the DETEC for up to seven years.
Over fifty leading Swiss scientists are involved in preparing the IPCC reports, either as authors or experts. The universities of Bern, Zurich, Geneva and Basel, the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), the Davos Observatory, the Geneva Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel, Agroscope, the FOEN, MeteoSwiss all work with the IPCC.
Co-chairmanship of the first IPCC working group covers a range of Switzerland’s interests: foreign policy, development policy, science and research, security, economy and development, as well as national and international climate policy.
Text box: CV Thomas Stocker
Thomas Stocker (born in 1959) grew up in Zurich. He studied environmental physics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), graduating in 1984. He completed his dissertation under the supervision of Kolumban Hutter at the ETHZ Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology. This work won him the ETH Medal in 1987. After a period of research at University College London, he obtained a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, which enabled him to work on the development of efficient climate models and to study abrupt climate changes at McGill University (Canada) from 1989 to 1991. He then worked as Associate Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Columbia in New York from 1991 to 1993.
In 1993, Thomas Stocker was appointed Professor at the Physics Institute at the University of Bern, where he heads the Climate and Environmental Physics Department. The work conducted by his team focuses on the modelling of abrupt climate change, studies on past and future changes in ocean circulation, as well as on the reconstitution of climate history using ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic. The Institute is world leader in determining the greenhouse gas concentrations of the last 800,000 years on the basis of air trapped in ice cores.
Thomas Stocker has authored or co-authored over 140 published scientific articles. Since 2006, he has been a member of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation and, since 2008, he has been Director of the National Centre of Competence for Climate Research (NCCR Climate). Since 1997, he has also played a leading role in the work of the UN’s IPCC. In particular, he coordinated the drafting of the chapters Physical Climate Processes and Feedback and Global Climate Change Projections in the reports produced by WG I and published by the IPCC in 2001 and 2007. He was awarded the National Latsis Prize in 1993 and made Doctor honoris causa of the University of Versailles in 2006.
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General Secretariat of the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications; General Secretariat DETEC
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